God Love Her Chapter Twenty-two Teaser

“It’s been abandoned for eight years now.”
Startled, I turned away from the house’s rotting fence to look at a young woman who stood at the next house’s mailbox. She had tired blue eyes and was still wearing a worn pink bathrobe, which was tied tightly at the waist.
“I’ve lived here for five years, and no one’s ever looked that place. The woman I bought my place from said that the couple who used to live there packed up and moved to Florida three years before I came. I wish I could afford to move to Florida.” Her eyes turned distant and she turned her face upward, as if she could feel the Florida sun on her face. “But they’re gone now, and that eyesore is condemned. They’ll be tearing it down next Friday. What are you looking at it for, anyway?”
“I used to live there,” I replied. “It was a long time ago.”
“Well, you look like you’ve gone up in the world since then.” The woman nodded at my clothes. They were the ones from the day Bella and I had left Forks. Clothes that Esme had bought for me. I supposed that they would seem pretty fancy in this neighbourhood. Esme only bought high end merchandise. “If I were you, I’d go back to wherever you’re from and forget about this place. Anywhere has to be better than this.”
The woman took her mail out of her mailbox and stuck it under her arm. She gave me a small wave and entered her house, closing the door firmly behind her.
I looked back at the other house longingly. I had hoped that I would be able to come here and find my closure and be able to return to Bella. I had only lived in two places in Chicago. This house, and one other that remembered very well.
A group home. My first group home. It was where I had gotten my first taste of crime, and where my (rather lengthy) juvenile record had its humble beginnings.
With one last look at the decrepit house, I started my bike and rode towards the last place I really wanted to go.